Create self signed SSL certificates for Website testing in IIS7

A very hard info to find, but at last here it is:

How to Create a Self Signed Certificate in IIS 7

MVC - Designing the "Model" part of MVC

Yesterday I found myself struggling with the idea of how to implement the Model part of an MVC application in an organized and maintainable way. While googling my way I came across with this two articles that I've found very interesting, and have helped me to clear my thoughts a bit:

http://geekswithblogs.net/michelotti/archive/2009/10/25/asp.net-mvc-view-model-patterns.aspx
http://lostechies.com/jimmybogard/2009/06/30/how-we-do-mvc-view-models/

Best practices for ASP.NET MVC

A must read if you are developing with MVC, from the ASP.NET and Web Tools Developer Content Team blog.

Best Practices for ASP.NET MVC:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/aspnetue/archive/2010/09/17/second_2d00_post.aspx

Converting Enum to List in C#

This is an easy but recurrent question that I end searching on Google from time to time. So to adhere to this blog's motto and not searching it again here's the solution:

Enum.GetValues(typeof(SomeEnum)).Cast();

(The original solution thread at stackoverflow)

NCalc: a mathematical expressions evaluator in .NET

For a project that I've been developing lately I needed to evaluate some mathematical expressions that I'll store as text strings. So my first thought was like "I'm not the first man on earth with such necessity, ergo, it must have been accomplished by someone else before me". That is a thought that I have in a lot of situations, but fortunately this time it turned out to be truth.

As the CodePlex project's page states: "NCalc is a mathematical expressions evaluator in .NET. NCalc can parse any expression and evaluate the result, including static or dynamic parameters and custom functions".

IMHO is an excellent tool, but to be fair, I'm not doing nothing overly complicated in my project.

HOWTO trigger MVC 3 validation from jQuery

Have you ever wonder how to trigger de MVC 3 form validations from jQuery? ... well, I've done it, and belive me, I spend more than an hour finding out how to. So, the answer is pretty simple: to trigger the validators do something like

$('#MyForm').validate().form();

And for checking if the all the validations get passed look for something like

var isMyFormValid = $('#MyForm').validate().valid();

That's all.

(The answer was found thanks to the ASP.NET forums)

Test your javascript code online

Some time ago thanks to an answer at StackOverflow I discovered an amazing web service called jsfiddle. Basically it allows you to test your JavaScript code online with the option to make use of some of the most popular frameworks out there (like jQuery, Mootools, YUI, Dojo, etc..), and if you need so, you can share your "fiddles" too.

An excellent tool that always come handy.